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E's Otherwise, Vol. 4 - Suffer the Children
After a break of five months, E's Otherwise returns with the fourth volume. This disc starts a new story arc where Kai starts on a quest, and discovers a group of psychic children being used by a church. While some of the individual episodes are fairly entertaining, the series continues to meander about. It hasn't really developed a solid story yet, just jumping from story to story without any meaning or purpose.
Series recap:
In the future, the whole world is controlled by 12 large corporations. Even governments are under the thumb of these powerful conglomerates. One of them, Ashurum, has been collecting people with psychic ability, called E's, to form a fighting group. Their latest acquisition is Kai, a quiet young man who is a pacifist at heart. Ashurum has created this group in order to protect other psychics, who are feared and hunted throughout the world. Or so they claim. While that's a good story to tell the young E's, Ashurum is only using the psychics for their own ends.
In the first volume, Kai and the other E's are ordered to attack the city of Gald in order to route out some rebels. During the attack Kai gets knocked out and separated from the rest of the group. He's found, wounded, by Yuuki, a sort-of private eye who takes on jobs other people turn down, and his young friend Oska. They nurse him back to health and Kai decides to stay with them. He's never been in the outside world and it's new and exciting. So Kai and Yuuki team up and start taking on some real tough assignments. But Ashurum hasn't forgotten about Kai, and they want him back at any cost.
Volume Four:
After Kai's disappearance at the end of the previous volume, he materializes in an underground complex where he meets a group of young children psychics. Kai spends a little bit of time with the kids making friends, especially with one named Raphael, and discovers that they being kept by Cardinal Ghibelline. The Cardinal is using them for his own profit and has brainwashed them into thinking that their underground rooms are heaven.
Kai abhors the way that these psychic children are being used. On a daily basis they have to fight robots that are "invading heaven." In reality Ghibelline is being paid to help test anti-psychic robots that a corporation is developing. The kids are risking their lives to prefect robots that may be one day used to hunt their own kind down.
Ghibelline makes a deal with Kai: If he can find the Sacrament of Calvaria, they children will be released. This is the same item that Yuuki has made some references to in the past, an object that many people want, but no one possess.
In the final episode, things switch gears a bit and things go in yet another direction. A group is really interested in Oska and the powers that she may have. Powers she doesn't even know she possess. Some thugs are sent to kidnap her, but a friendly face arrives first.
This show has failed to capture my interest, mainly because the focus of the show keeps shifting. The first volume dealt with Ashurum and their psychic program, the next pair had Kai and Yuuki having some adventures, and then in this volume Kai flys solo and starts on a quest. What does any of this have to do with anything. Pick a story and run with it guys!
The writing isn't very good either. People do some really stupid things, and they seem to work out for them, where in reality they never would. The way that Kai handles Ghibelline is just ludicrous in several ways.
This isn't a horrible show, every episode by itself is okay, but the constantly switching focus of the show really makes it hard to get excited about wanting to see the next volume.
The DVD:
This disc contains four episodes, down from five on the first two discs, in a white keepcase. There isn't an insert.
Audio:
Like most anime that ADV puts out nowadays, this disc offers the choice of a stereo Japanese track with optional English subtitles or an English dub in 5.1. I alternated between tracks as I watched the show, and I had a slight preference for the original language track, but thought the English dub was fine. The English track was a more full, but the Japanese track wasn't flat at all. Both tracks sounded fine, with no distortion or other defects.
Video:
The full frame video quality for this DVD was good. There is some aliasing in the background and some of the fine lines shimmer, but this is a minor issue. The colors are bright and the lines are tight. A very nice DVD.
Extras:
Extras on this disc include a non-credit opening and closing, an art gallery of production sketches, and some text actor profiles for the English dub cast.
Final Thoughts:
This show has certainly fallen off after the first disc. The story just seems to be aimless, telling a series of filler stories. None of the shows on this disc give the viewer the feeling that they are advancing the main story. The individual episodes are fun to watch though, which makes this a good rental.
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